Robert Wright:

ISIS is here. And it's here, in part, because we got all freaked out about Al Qaeda and overreacted to it. And now we're getting freaked out about ISIS.

Charles Simic:

"Things will never be the same in this country", people kept saying after September 11, and that has proved to be true. What hasn't changed is our belief that we can eradicate evil in the world.

Adam Gopnik:

Do you have the courage to embrace an inarguable and obvious truth when it might cost you something to do so? A politician who fails this test is not high-minded or neutral; he or she is just craven, and shouldn't be trusted with power.

Nicole Hensley:

Kermit Elementary School officials called it a threat when the 9-year-old boy, Aiden Steward, in a playful act of make-believe, told a classmate he could make him disappear with a ring forged in fictional Middle Earth's Mount Doom.

Megha Rajagopalan:

The southern Chinese city of Shenzhen suspended 14 police officers and put a police chief under investigation on Tuesday on suspicion of feasting on an endangered giant salamander, state media reported.

Abu Ahmed:

This can't be stopped now. This is out of the control of any man.